Holiday in Scotland and Ely

Sunny Scotland

We went up to Edinburgh to spent a few days in “sunny” Scotland, which had it’s moments. Liz did not like the trip at all. On the way through the borders it started to bucket with rain and little brown rivers of mud and pebbles were running down the hills and across the roads, I had to slow down to 60mph, joking, about 30mph in places while Liz sat quivering next to me with my jacket over her head so that she couldn’t see, if she had her way we would still be on the road to Scotland! There had been some terrible floods in Jedburgh a couple of weeks earlier, so I guess this was on her mind. We did not go that way, but went through Selkirk, Hawick (hoik!) and Galashiels. The mornings were chilly, but soon warmed up. We went and visited the burial spots of Liz’s mother and father. The weather was great and I took a few pictures, the wheat is being harvested late in Scotland as well it would seem. I thought there were a lot of Polish people around, but then realised the language was Scottish, silly me. We found a butchery in a run down part of Edinburgh, called Shumba Butchery. I bought some excellent biltong and was given a piece of droe wors, both were very good. They had a few SA products there. The butchers were both African and one spoke Shona, so probably came from Zimbabwe, they seemed to be good old fashioned salesmen and the biltong was good. We had lots to eat and even managed to get black pudding and chips for Liz and a spicy special haggis for the older person, that would be me! The haggis was very nice and very spicy just right for a pensioner or similar. Liz was a little disappointed as the pickings were a little slim in the charity shops even though there were quite a few in Gorgy, a part of Edinburgh.

We visited a butterfly farm at Dobbies garden centre off the Edinburgh bypass. It was very humid and warm inside and my camera kept getting fogged up for the first fifteen minutes or so. There were some little quail running around under our feet all over the show, you could almost touch them, and the butterflies were flying tantalisingly close, people were running after the blue morpho variety with their phones trying to take pictures, or maybe just taking calls for them, I don’t know. Once the camera had warmed up we got a few pictures. There were even a few pythons and insects in glass enclosures in another room. There were huge moths as well, as large as my hand. Liz was thoroughly enchanted by the whole place. There was a little bonus, in that I got the pensioners discount, hooray! I remembered there was a Shell garage nearby that had fuel at a better price than quite a few other garages, so we went there and filled up. On the way home the next day we went past and I saw that the price had been reduced by a penny $%£%*#!

Week two was quieter, spent in Forty Foot. We went to the auction on Saturday and bought a mattress for the new bed, Louise and Tristan joined us as well as Catriona and Bobby, quite a family gathering. We jammed the mattress into the back of the car,there was no way I wanted to risk it being bounced down the parkway again. We decided to take a little trip to Ely on Tuesday and invited Louise and Tristan to join us, we had a wonderful time and the weather was really kind to us, summer had arrived. We eventually found some parking and wandered down to the riverside with Tristan. We had a little walk along the bank and then went to a restaurant called the Maltings next to the river and had a magnificent meal. There were quite a few Muscovy duck and geese roaming around, looking for handouts. I warned Liz not to feed them, no matter what they said to her, she took my advice in and ignored it, we spent the rest of the time fending off feathered starving creatures! Tristan got to enjoy some mince and sweet potatoes, prepared by his father, mmmm. We sauntered off back to the car only to meet Matt’s father Phil and wife Judith who had decided to come out to Ely from Peterborough, what a pleasant surprise, Tristan was delighted too, he had a wonderful day.